I've finished the game for some time now, but I only just finished that FINAL battle, which I must admit was brutal . By some fluke though I also managed to keep Quoris and Karef alive too, which I'm surprised by because Karef sometimes acted a little suicidally (attacking those balors he almost always got more damage then he dished out and tended to stray a bit too far from the rest of the party to help him). I would say that the iron golems are probably the most consistently badass 'creatures' in the game IMO.

I was curious since it took me about 29 hours to get to that point, I was wondering if that was a long time compared to other people or not

I had more problems with the balors, thought. Since I forged 2 Swords of Doom +5 for my knight, the Iron Golems are falling like flies. He is fighting dual handed, 9 attacks in a row, dealing 30-90 damage each hit

Actually, after battle attempt one million and one, I actually sat down and prepared by making a few slaying arrows of varying types and an adamantium weapon for those golems. I only got off a few arrows, of which I did slay a single construct before my party was crowded by the encroaching baddies. The other golem was occupied by a dominated balor who I loved because he just dominated more baddies.

I've been pondering what my party would consist of for another run-through, how many times have you finished it ventilator?

the best (read: most powerful) party is 2 clerics, 2 wizards imo. especially for the really hard fights. There is not much that can beat 4x mass harm/mass heal/mass death ward/dehydrate/mass dominate/dominate undead/empowered fireball/greater disintegrate per round. Of course the game is much easier that way. Even the fight vs spider queen in the cave early on is rather easily made with this party pre-fireball, just sleep/soundburst and then coup-the-grace.

Can't do that fight, or at least not without keeping Kharef and/or Quoris alive. I got the cookie cutter party of two knights, cleric and wizard but I guess I'd have it easier with one knight and two wizard, or maybe the two cleric and two wizard one. Also the builds aren't optimal because I did experiment a bit with my characters.

Bah, I'll probably replay the game with a better party. Building a better dual-wield knight would also help.

ventilator, talk about dedication lol i doubt that bluesalamander has played it through five times!

my party had two wizards which made things easier, but it had some less then optimal aspects about it, such as my knight having tridents as his specialty, and a crossbowman cleric which was rarely used due to the spells he was always casting. Two wizards, two clerics sounds insanely potent.

Gragt, before you give up on your party try building some slaying arrows it certainly made things easier for me.

I used slaying arrows, but while they work ok for golems, the rest has such high fortitude saves that it isn't very helpful outside of pure luck. With luck I can also dispatch the vampires, maybe have my wizard take control of a balor, but then one of the NPC usualy gets killed. And there is always the matter of someone getting killed right off the bat before my cleric can act and cast mass death ward. Anyway I plan to replay the game in the near-future so ...